Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday appointed their foreign ministers to oversee negotiations for concluding a bilateral postwar peace treaty based on a 1956 joint declaration.
Foreign Minister Taro Kono and his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov plan to hold talks before Abe's planned trip to Russia in January for another summit, a senior Japanese official said after an Abe-Putin meeting on the margins of a Group of 20 summit in Buenos Aires.
The leaders also tapped Takeo Mori, a senior Japanese deputy foreign minister, and Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Igor Morgulov as their "special representatives" to carry out negotiations, according to the official.